Touring
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Live events company Madison Square Garden Entertainment (MSGE) improved its revenue 6% to $243 million in the fiscal third quarter ended March 31, the company announced Tuesday (May 6). Operating income of $27.3 million marked a 63% improvement. The results “reflect continued strong consumer and corporate demand as well as a wide variety of live […]
The Brooklyn Mirage remains closed after building inspectors declined to grant the recently renovated facility a permit to open on Friday (May 2) for the first of two back-to-back concerts by Sara Landry.
Sources monitoring the situation say Mirage officials were given a list of fixes that needed to be completed for the club to open following an extensive renovation at the venue complex Avant Garner, which includes the 80,000-square-foot, 6,000-capacity Williamsburg nightclub. Widely recognized as one of the top stops in New York for electronic and dance acts, the Mirage had operated for years with the support of New York Mayor Eric Adams, whose office has intervened on Avant Gardner’s behalf as part of an ongoing legal fight with New York’s State Liquor Authority (SLA). An Avant Gardner representative declined to comment on the proposed fixes.
The SLA threatened to revoke the Brooklyn Mirage’s liquor license several times in the past and convened a meeting that included representatives from the governor’s office to settle the dispute. Such high-placed help has been absent during this latest debacle, which has left the Mirage unable to open and facing the possibility of further cancellations as soon as Friday (May 9), when Loud Luxury is scheduled to perform at the facility.
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“We are doing everything in our power to get back on track — safely and in full compliance — as soon as possible,” reads a statement from Avant Gardener on the Brooklyn Mirage website.
At issue are new design elements at the Mirage, which is said to be one of the largest prefabricated timber structures ever built, at 65 feet high. The venue includes a wraparound LED wall with more than 3,000 LED panels; a fully kinetic shutter system; an L-Acoustics sound system with more than 100 speakers and subwoofers; a 90-foot stage; and 20,000 tons of rigging capacity. Crews have also expanded the space by adding three VIP mezzanines and two general admission dance floors.
“We want to be clear: the venue is show ready and the New Mirage has been built to exacting safety, structural, mechanical and technical specifications,” wrote Mirage officials in an Instagram post. “However, we were not able to meet the final inspection deadline.”
“This isn’t about construction, but compliance,” the post continued. “We’re working closely with city officials and will continue to be transparent throughout this process.”
The Mirage closed months ago with Avant Gardner’s new CEO, Josh Wyatt, promising to reopen the club on Thursday (May 1) after expanding its dance floor from a 5,500-person capacity to 6,250. As the opening date approached, videos and pictures of the renovation project started appearing online, with many fans openly questioning whether the venue would meet its deadline.
Wyatt took over as CEO last fall, and, in an open letter released a few months later, he promised to revive the Brooklyn Mirage as a “world class music and dance experience underpinned by extraordinary design and hospitality.”
After speculation that Bad Bunny would announce a global tour, the Puerto Rican star officially unveiled dates for Latin America, Europe, Australia and Japan. Set to kick off in November in the Dominican Republic, Bad Bunny will tour the world in support of his latest album Debí Tirar Más Fotos. He will wrap this year’s […]
After receiving a cease-and-desist from the owner of Las Vegas’ Sphere, Beyoncé has replaced the venue with another Nevada landmark in her Cowboy Carter Tour visuals.
Days after Billboard confirmed that Sphere Entertainment Co. CEO James Dolan’s attorneys had sent a letter to the superstar’s Parkwood Entertainment demanding that Bey remove a reference to the Sphere in a video that plays during one of her show’s interludes, fans at the tour’s third night in Los Angeles Sunday (May 4) were the first to see that she had done just that. In lieu of a ginormous Bey bending down to pick up the iconic spherical concert space — as was depicted in the original visual dubbed “Attack of the 400 Foot Cowboy” — she now reaches for Allegiant Stadium, seemingly edited overtop of where the Sphere was initially.
The following morning, Parkwood posted the updated footage on Instagram, writing, “What happens in Vegas starts with a BANG.”
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“Bey really said ‘you want petty? here’s petty,’” one fan commented on the post.
Another person wrote with a cry-laugh emoji, “Oh the shade.”
Sunday’s show came two nights after the New York Post first reported that Dolan’s company had sent Bey’s team the cease-and-desist, alleging that “the prominent appearance and manipulation of SEG’s Sphere™ venue in the video [had been] unauthorized.” In addition to accusing the 35-time Grammy winner of showcasing the Sphere without permission, the letter also reportedly criticized the visual for supposedly misleading fans by creating “significant speculation that Beyoncé will end her tour with a Sphere residency,” despite the fact that the Cowboy Carter trek is actually scheduled to end with two shows at Allegiant in July.
Billboard previously reached out to reps for Beyoncé and tour promoter Live Nation, but did not hear back.
Prior to the change, the Sphere had been just one of several global landmarks included in the visual. Featuring Bey modeling several glamorous looks and towering over various cities worldwide, the “Texas Hold ‘Em” singer also interacted with the Statue of Liberty in New York City, the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., in the interlude.
Following two more nights at SoFi Stadium in L.A. this week, Bey is set to bring the tour supporting Billboard 200-topping album Cowboy Carter to Chicago and East Rutherford, N.J., before heading overseas for performances in London and Paris. In late June, she’ll circle back to the states for shows in Texas, Maryland and Georgia before closing out with her Nevada performances.
See Bey’s updated, Sphere-less tour visual below.
Hawk-eyed fans spotted Bad Bunny‘s signature white plastic chairs from Debí Tirar Más Fotos in different cities across the world over the weekend (May 3-4), leading many to believe that he’s set to announce a world tour soon.
Although the Puerto Rican superstar has not posted on his socials or officially announced a stint, the chairs were spotted outside of venues and stadiums across Latin America and Europe, including in Peru, Chile, Mexico, Brazil, Poland, France, England, Spain and Costa Rica.
It’s not totally surprising that he’d eventually announce a world tour. In fact, he hinted at it earlier this year when he announced his residency at El Choli.
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“Thanks to music and the love you give me through my music, I’ve had the privilege of traveling to sing in different places of the world. I appreciate and love to do it,” Bad Bunny said in January. “There are places I for sure will return to, like Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia. And some I’ve never been to but would like to visit, like Brazil and Japan. And there are places I haven’t been to in a long time, like Italy, London, Spain, I know, and I promise before the year ends, I’ll tell you the date and time I will be visiting.”
The tour would follow other Bad Bunny mega tours, including World’s Hottest Tour and, most recently, the Most Wanted Tour. The former set the record in 2022 for the highest grossing Latin tour in Boxscore history, and the latter grossed more than $207.8 million, selling 703,000 tickets across 30 concerts.
Bad Bunny’s Debí Tirar Más Fotos was released Jan. 5 on Día de Reyes. The set — which scored the artist his fourth Billboard 200 leader — is a celebration of Puerto Rico and the sonic heritage that has soundtracked the island for generations, including plena and jíbara. Bad Bunny’s unprecedented 30-day residency at the Coliseo de Puerto Rico is set to draw an estimated 250,000 visitors to the island over the summer.
The owner of Las Vegas’ Sphere has hit Beyoncé with a cease and desist letter over fan-shot concert footage that shows the superstar picking up a computer-generated version of the iconic Las Vegas venue and briefly juggling it between her hands, Billboard has confirmed.
“Beyoncé — many orders of magnitude larger than the Sphere venue — leans over, picks up the venue, and looms over it,” the letter reads, according to the New York Post, which first reported the news, leading to “significant speculation that Beyoncé will end her tour with a Sphere residency.” (Billboard has not independently obtained the letter.)
The filmed sequence, which plays during an interlude at Beyoncé’s newly launched Cowboy Carter tour, irked Sphere Entertainment Co. executive chairman/CEO James Dolan because Sphere unsuccessfully lobbied the “Texas Hold ‘Em” singer to perform at the venue in the past, sources with knowledge of the negotiations tell Billboard.
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Attorneys for Dolan, who is also the chairman/CEO of Madison Square Garden Entertainment Group, want Beyoncé to cut the brief sequence from her three-hour concert, which she performed for a second time at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles on Thursday (May 1).
The letter is addressed to Beyoncé’s production company, Parkwood Entertainment, on behalf of Sphere Entertainment Group and authored by Kathleen McCarthy of the law firm King & Spalding. In the letter, Spaulding accuses Parkwood of using imagery of the Sphere’s likeness “without permission” and accuses the singer of misleading her fans.
“It has recently come to SEG’s attention that a Cowboy Carter tour interlude video contains the unauthorized use of SEG’s intellectual property,” the letter reads. “SEG is sure that multiple aspects of the interlude video, including other brands, clips and music, were duly cleared by the tour with rights permissions from the rights holders whose works were used in the video, as is common practice. SEG, however, was never asked and the prominent appearance and manipulation of SEG’s Sphere™ venue in the video is unauthorized.”
“SEG demands that the tour cease and desist from using the Sphere™ venue in the video immediately,” the letter continues, demanding that Parkwood “refrain from using this imagery on any merchandise, promotional or marketing materials, or in tour movies, etc. Should you fail to do so, SEG reserves all rights to take further action as SEG deems appropriate without notice to you.”
Beyoncé has never played Sphere in Las Vegas, although her representatives reportedly held talks with officials at Sphere Entertainment about a possible residency at the venue several years ago. Those discussions never materialized into bookings and Beyoncé has instead opted to play Allegiant Stadium when her Cowboy Carter tour stops in Las Vegas on July 25 and 26.
Billboard reached out to representatives for Beyoncé and tour promoter Live Nation for comment, but did not receive a response by press time.
In the historically slow first quarter, Live Nation’s revenue dropped 11% to $3.38 billion (an 8% decline in constant currency), but adjusted operating income (AOI) fared better, declining 6% (or 0.5% in constant currency) to $341.1 million.
As the U.S. economy teeters and businesses brace for a protracted and uncertain trade war, Live Nation, the world’s largest concert promoter and ticketing company, believes the business will recover from the slow start to the year. CEO Michael Rapino expects 2025 to be “a historic year for live music, with a strong start having us on track to deliver double-digit growth in operating income and AOI this year,” he said in a statement.
The first quarter is relatively slow as concerts are concentrated in clubs and theaters before festivals, stadium and amphitheater shows appear later in the year. In 2024, the first quarter accounted for just 16% of Live Nation’s full-year revenue, and the concerts division received just 15% of its 2024 revenue in the first quarter. The second and third quarters, in contrast, accounted for 59% of 2024 revenue.
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Various financial metrics portend well for a stronger finish to 2025. Through mid-April, event-related deferred revenue — money collected for future concerts — of $5.4 billion was up 24% year-over-year. The 95 million concert tickets sold for Live Nation concerts represented a double-digit increase. On-sale sell-through rates were at or better than the same period last year. Ticketmaster’s primary ticketing volume was up 5% and gross transaction value (GTV) was up 10%.
The various divisions expect to have similar margins to previous years. Concerts’ AOI margin should be consistent with the 3% achieved in 2024. Ticketmaster’s AOI margin should be in the high 30s and sponsorships in the low 60s.
Absent stadium and amphitheater shows that occur later in the year, Live Nation’s concerts business had $2.48 billion in revenue, down 14% (11% in constant currency) from the prior-year quarter, from 22.3 million fans who attended 11,300 events. Concerts’ adjusted AOI improved to $6.6 million from a $1.8 million loss a year earlier.
In the ticketing segment, revenue fell 4% (1% at constant currency) to $695 million, and adjusted AOI of $253.1 million was down 11% (7% in constant currency). Concerts’ primary GTV was up 9%. Of the 78 million fee-bearing tickets, a number that was consistent with the first quarter of 2024, concert tickets were up 4% and accounted for 60% of volume. Non-concert tickets were down 9%.
Sponsorship revenue of $216.1 million was up 2% (9% at constant currency) while the division’s adjusted AOI of $136.0 million was up 5% (11% in constant currency). In the quarter, Live Nation secured new name-in-title sponsorships, including Citizens Live at The Wylie and Synovus Bank Amphitheater at Chastain Park.
Foreign exchange affected AOI by 5% due to Live Nation’s exposure to the Mexican peso and other Latin American currencies. The company expects foreign exchange headwinds to result in low, single-digit impacts to revenue and AOI in the second quarter.
Shakira is No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Tours chart for March, back on top after ruling the February edition. She led last month’s list with $32.9 million but doubles her earnings on the newest update. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour earned $70.6 million from 11 reported shows. That’s more than any act has grossed in any March since the charts launched in 2019.
Monthly grosses typically balloon during the summer, when summer weather allows for stadium shows in the U.S. and Europe. With most acts confined to indoor arenas in the fall, winter, and spring, Shakira’s Latin roots fueled a massive stadium run in Central and South America and Mexico. She surpasses Bad Bunny’s March 2024, Coldplay in 2023, Bad Bunny again in 2022, the Backstreet Boys in 2020, and P!nk in 2019. (There was no ranking in March 2021 due to COVID-19).
Mexico was the setting of Shakira’s March shows, hitting Monterrey and Guadalajara before climaxing in Mexico City. There, the Colombian superstar played seven shows at Estadio GNP Seguros from March 19-30, bringing in $46.6 million from 396,000 tickets sold. Those shows are No. 1 on Top Boxscore, more than tripling the gross of No. 2.
Shakira’s seven Mexico City shows set a venue record, eclipsing RBD’s six nights (2023), Daddy Yankee’s five (2022), and Taylor Swift’s four (2023). But demand was so outrageous that she announced four more dates at the same stadium in August, extending to 11 shows.
The Estadio GNP Seguros shows alone would have secured Shakira the No. 1 spot on Top Tours, but her schedule also included two shows apiece in Monterrey ($12.5 million; 88.2K tickets) and Guadalajara ($11.5 million; 70.3K).
Including the tour’s first shows in February and further dates in April, Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour has earned a reported $111 million and sold 910,000 tickets in Latin America. Shakira re-ups in Charlotte, N.C. on May 13 to begin a 23-show run in the U.S. and Canada. Then, she’ll be back in Mexico, Dominican Republic, and Peru for 18 more dates through November.
Just as Shakira was No. 1 in February and one-upped herself in March, Tyler, the Creator scores a second consecutive month at No. 2 with increased totals. This month, Tyler earned $36.2 million and sold 221,000 tickets, up 25% and 17%, respectively, from last month. It’s the first time that two acts repeated on top in consecutive months in three years, when Bad Bunny and Elton John went 1-2, respectively, in February and March 2022.
Three years after crowning Boxscore charts with his six band mates, BTS’ J-Hope is No. 3 on Top Tours with his first solo shows. Across 10 dates in March, he brought in $26.6 million and sold 149,000 tickets. After three home-town shows in Seoul, he toured North America. Like Shakira, his March peak was in Mexico City, with a $6.1 million double-header at Palacio de los Deportes on March 22-23.
TOMORROW X TOGETHER and NCT 127 represent K-pop elsewhere, with $10.6 million and $7 million, respectively.
Dead & Company follows at No. 4, with the Eagles trailing at No. 7. Both classic rock acts played shows at Las Vegas’ Sphere. As has become common in the last year and a half, the Sin City arena is No. 1 on the Top Venues (15,001+ capacity) chart, combining both bands’ dates – plus two from Anyma – for $45.4 million and 195,000 tickets.
Country music is rooted in the U.S. and has historically struggled to export internationally. So it’s a welcome surprise that this month’s roster of charting country tours include Jelly Roll in Canada, Chris Stapleton in Australia and New Zealand, and C2C Country To Country across the United Kingdom.
Shakira and J-Hope provided Mexican promoter OCESA with some of its biggest wins during March. But they crowd the top 10 of Top Boxscores further with two festivals. Mexico City’s Vive Latino Festival grossed $14.2 million and sold 146,000 tickets in the middle of the month, and Bogota’s Festival Estereo Picnic earned $10.1 million in March’s final days. Altogether, OCESA grossed $140 million and sold 1.3 million tickets.
In a major first for the festival business, a three-day music festival in Southern California is opening a permanent year-round social club and restaurant in the middle of its festival site, hoping to keep the party going 365 days a year.
On Tuesday (April 29), Allen Sanford, founder of the BeachLife festival in Redondo Beach, Calif., and his business partner Rob Lissner officially opened the doors to the California Surf Club, a 22,000-square-foot public restaurant and private social club that will serve as the centerpiece of this year’s three-day festival headlined by Lenny Kravitz, Sublime and Alanis Morissette.
Sanford, a long-time restaurant owner and venue operator in Los Angeles’ iconic South Bay region, has been working on the adaptive reuse project for several years, leasing and rehabbing two harbor front buildings near Redondo Beach’s popular tourist pier into a members-only lifestyle club and public restaurant on the Redondo Beach waterfront.
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“The California Surf Club is two buildings,” Sanford explained to Billboard. “The south building is a membership club. The north building is a restaurant. During the festival, the south building will be open for all the members of the club. It’ll be open to artists and to some different ticket types. And then the north building will actually be part of the VIP experience.”
Allen noted that “the building is encompassed into the footprint of the festival, which is fairly rare. And it’s all the same vibe and culture of BeachLife.”
Designed by architect Stephen Jones and interior designer Steven Jones, the club mixes casual dining with a coastal-modern casual environment, where members who pay $350 per month can dine, play billiards with friends and relax near a warm fire pit. The club is decorated throughout with vintage surf art and artifacts, floor-to-ceiling glass, reclaimed wood accents and lush landscaping.
There’s currently a waiting list to join, Sanford explained, noting that more than 400 people have already signed up for the private club, which will serve as the unofficial headquarters of Beachlife Festival during the May 2-4 festival.
The California Surf Club also includes the Paddle Perch, a waterfront area outfitted with club-owned standup paddleboards, kayaks and outrigger canoes, as well as hot showers for surfers coming out of the water and a surfboard valet service. It even boasts several performance spaces, including a stage-ready room with a Wrensilva turntable console, high-end AV system, and large-format screen for live music, surf flicks, sports, and special events.
Under director of memberships Chris Brown, California Surf Club offers four membership tiers — Founders, Classic, Ambassador and Groundswell — as well as limited day-rate access. In addition to Sanford and Lissner, California Surf Club is led by president Jeff Jones and COO Jerry Garbus, along with Pennywise frontman Jim Lindberg, musician Donavon Frankenreiter, professional surfer Chris Frohoff, athlete Danny Ching, Quality Seafood President Jeff Jones, Redondo Beach School Superintendent Dr. Nikki Wesley, former Redondo Beach police chief Keith Kauffman and more.
The north building of the Surf Club boasts the public-facing waterfront restaurant with more than 250 seats across indoor dining rooms, shaded patios, firepit lounges and an Airstream courtyard. Led by executive chef Dennis Horton, the restaurant includes live-fire cooking, a lagoon-facing walk-up window with a casual “Lagoon Menu” for beachgoers, a cold seafood bar with shucked-to-order oysters, ceviche, sashimi, and crab, and performance spaces for guest DJ sets.
“The California Surf Club is like a surfer’s second home,” Sanford tells Billboard. “As a 47-year-old father, the only place I can go out to is a restaurant and that’s uncomfortable a lot of times — there’s nothing recreationally to do with my friends and family where we can hang out and enjoy the ocean. It’s literally designed to be your friend’s house that lives on the beach that has really good food and drink. It’s a place to just come and hang out with like-minded people.”
California Surf Club, Redondo Beach
PJ Cordero
California Surf Club, Redondo Beach
PJ Cordero
California Surf Club, Redondo Beach
PJ Cordero
BeachLife Festival
Courtesy Photo
The U.S. House of Representatives easily passed the bipartisan TICKET Act in a 409-15 vote on Tuesday (April 29), sending Congress’ first-ever regulatory framework for the event ticketing business on to the Senate.
Sponsored by Reps. Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.) and Jan Schakowsky (D-lll.), the legislation is meant to improve transparency and disclosure of ticket pricing and fees, ban deceptive marketing practices and improve consumer protections by requiring refunds for cancelled or postponed events.
While the legislation introduces long-sought legal protections for artists and fans, some advocacy groups argue that the bill doesn’t go far enough to curb ticket scalping and warn that its language could inadvertently legalize controversial sales practices, including speculative ticket sales.
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“The Ticket Act that just passed the House does not do nearly enough to protect fans and consumers against bad actors,” reads a statement from National Independent Trade Organization executive director Nathan Marro shortly after the bill passed.
At issue is a clause in the bill that Marro and other industry groups like the National Independent Venue Association say create a legal loophole for speculative ticket sales — a highly criticized practice where scalpers sell tickets they don’t actually own, only procuring the tickets after a consumer has agreed to buy them at a substantial markup. Under the language of the TICKET Act a “ticket exchange that does not have actual or constructive possession of an event ticket shall not sell, offer for sale, or advertise for sale such event ticket.” Marro worries that the provision is diluted by a loophole in the legislation which allows secondary sites like Vivid to offer “a service to an individual to obtain an event ticket on behalf of such individual.”
Marro argues that such a service — similar to Vivid’s Seat Saver program, where consumers pay to procure seats before they go on sale to the public, will worsen long-standing public complaints about fair access to tickets.
“Vivid Seats spec ticket ‘seat saver’ program is still 100% legal,” under the current language of the bill, Marro said. “NITO urges the Senate to strengthen this bill prior to passage and we will continue to advocate for stronger protections for our community.”
Stephen Parker, executive director for the National Independent Venues Association, also called out the spec ticket loophole, noting “the inclusion of a ‘concierge service’ carveout, as written in the TICKET Act, would undermine” the legislation. Specifically, Parker asserts that the carve out erodes the trust the public has in the artist — or show presenter — and their ability to fairly and transparently schedule ticket sales. When services like Seat Saver mislead fans into thinking they can buy tickets for high profile events ahead of schedule, Parker says trust in the safety and fairness of the ticket sales process is diminished.
“States across the country have proven that strong, loophole-free ticketing consumer protections work, and Congress should build on that momentum,” wrote Parker, noting that legislatures in Arizona, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Nevada all banned speculative tickets sales without carve outs for concierge programs like seat saver.
Parker and Marro have identified other shortcomings with the TICKET Act, including stronger enforcement of the BOTS Act. Marro said his group of talent agents and managers would also like to see greater disclosure around all-in pricing so fans know how much was added to the face value of the ticket by the promoter, the ticketing company and the venue.
The TICKET Act now heads to the U.S. Senate for consideration.